Qatar has announced that it will be dropping its projected number of stadiums for the 2022 World Cup from 12 to 8, the latest in a long series of decisions that have some soccer fans shaking their heads.

Brazil is scheduled to use 12 this summer and Germany used the same figure in 2006, though only 10 South African venues hosted matches in 2010.

According to a Bloomberg report, Ghanim Al Kuwari, the Qatar organizing committee’s senior manager for projects, announced the downgrade today without giving a reason.

From Bloomberg:

Qatar, which holds the world’s third-largest natural-gas reserves, plans to spend more than $200 billion on new infrastructure before hosting the sporting event, including $34 billion on a rail and metro system, $7 billion on a port and $17 billion on an airport. The stadiums will cost $4 billion, according to the ministry of business and trade.

“Their decision was motivated by cost-cutting following an assessment of the real needs on the ground,” John Sfakianakis, chief investment strategist at investment company MASIC in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, said in an e-mail. “It does always make good sense to do necessary cost-cutting and reviews of capex for such huge projects that are front-loaded.”

MLSSoccer.com reports that the last time a World Cup was played at eight or less venues was in Argentina for the 1978 tournament.

They can’t afford to build them because they spent all that money buying their vote.

This is getting ridiculous. In my industry, when someone makes a bid for a contract and after they are awarded the contract they have to live up to the contract. They can’t go changing the scope of the deal without risk of having the contract voided and awarded to someone else. Of course a little corruption and back door dealing can probably solve that.

I dunno I’ve seen rich clients drop million dollar change orders like you wouldn’t believe. The meeting goes like this, “Hey Sepp we brought you $4million cash in those suitcases. We’re going to use 4 less stadiums, ok? Thanks! We knew you’d approve.”

Well you do have a point. I’m in the surveying/civil engineering field. In the real world, a case like this where the contractor is unable or unwilling to deliver what they agreed to deliver they lost that contract, have to deal with the financial losses themselves, and somebody else gets awarded the contract. But like you said, the suitcases of money work wonders.